The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: Intertwined Stories from the Frontlines of UK-Based Palestine Advocacy by Malaka Mohammed Shwaikh and Rebecca Ruth Gould Although we only later came to realise its significance in our lives and for Palestine advocacy generally, February 2017 turned out to be a watershed month for those of us on the frontlines of the Palestine advocacy movement within the UK. During this month, amid a wave of cancellations of events critical of Israel, we were attacked in the media, smeared as antisemitic, and both supported and censored by our universities. The following month was marked by unprecedented censorship of Israel-critical events across the UK. As we now know, these events were linked to the UK government’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.1 While many communities and activists were affected by the event cancellations and the many different forms of censorship linked to the IHRA adoption, to our knowledge, we are the only UK- based academics who were directly targeted as a result of our written statements relating to Israel during this tumultuous year. Malaka was based at the University of Exeter, and completing her PhD on Palestinian hunger strikers at the time of the attack. Rebecca had recently moved to the University of Bristol, where she was a Reader (Associate Professor) in Translation Studies and Comparative Literature. Rebecca would like to thank Kate Gould, Riz Mokal, Mike Joseph, Yair Wallach, Tom Sperlinger, and Seth Anzieska for help and insights, without implicating any of them in the views expressed here. Malaka would like to thank Yara Hawari, Ilan Pappe, Katie Natanel, Nadia Najjab, Cameron Rose, Ben Jamal, as well as family, friends, and colleagues who supported her throughout this difficult time and beyond. Copies of all materials quoted herein are in the present authors’ possession unless otherwise indicated. 1 For further background on the working definition and its adoption within the UK, see Rebecca Ruth Gould, “Legal Form and Legal Legitimacy: The IHRA Definition of Antisemitism as a Case Study in Censored Speech,” Law, Culture and the Humanities (https://doi.org/10.1177/1743872118780660). 1 Two years after these events, we are telling our stories together. Although we did not know each other at the time when we were attacked, we have since become allies, co-authors, and academic collaborators with a common interest in Palestine.2 The better we came to know each other, the more struck we were by the elements that brought our stories together. We were attacked by the same organisation in the days leading up to Israel Apartheid Week, in both cases for statements we had made about Israeli politics several years earlier. In both cases, too, the media systematically distorted what we had said, and our universities failed spectacularly to support us while we were under attack. Few observers at the time recognized the links between what was happening to us, but in retrospect the timing and other parallels in the attacks makes them appear like part of a coordinated effort to silence Israel-critical speech.3 The intertwining of our stories sheds light on the pervasive media and institutional complicity in silencing dissent across Europe and North America every day. This is not however the only reason for considering how our stories intersect. Our intertwined stories—their simultaneity, their parallels, and their divergences—also provide material for reflection for activists who recognise their reliance on free speech as a condition of possibility for their activism. Our encounters with censorship shed new light on the dynamics that the US-based advocacy organisation Palestine Legal has termed “the Palestine exception to free speech,” whereby special interest groups “pressure universities, government actors, and other institutions to censor or punish advocacy in support of Palestinian rights.”4 They also reveal how hate speech wounds within the particular logic of the Palestine 2 Our first co-authored publication is Malaka Mohammed Shwaikh and Rebecca Ruth Gould, Prison Hunger Strikes as Civil Resistance: Protesting Imprisonment in Palestinian Prisons (Washington, DC: International Center on Nonviolent Conflict Research Monograph Series, 2019). 3 These efforts arguably reached their peak the following year, in the explosive controversy relating to antisemitism within the Labour Party. For further background see Jamie Stern-Weiner, “Labour’s fabricated anti-Semitism crisis,” in Corbyn and the Future of Labour (London: Verso, 2016). 4 “The Palestine Exception to Free Speech,” Executive Summary p. 3 https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/09/Palestine%20Exception%20Report%20Executive%20Su mmary%20Final.pdf). 2 exception to free speech.5 By exploring the intersections of free speech and Palestinian rights in these pages, we shed light on the specific pressures that advocates face, and reveal how even liberal democracies with robust traditions of supporting free speech tend to fall short when it comes to supporting the rights of activists and academics in their campaigns for Palestinian rights. We narrate our stories consecutively, beginning with Malaka’s and followed by Rebecca’s, and then consider the similarities and differences that marked our experiences. We conclude by reflecting on how universities and academics can respond to such attacks while respecting the academic freedom of their faculty and students and being attentive to the challenges faced in particular by minority members of the community and by Palestinians when they come under attack. The ways in which we were targeted and attacked were related—having occurred simultaneously—and different, given our distinct positions within the academy’s hierarchy. In co-authoring each other’s narratives, we reshaped our respective experiences, which were isolating in the extreme when they first occurred, away from the politics of recrimination, and towards new solidarities, that could only have emerged based on what we experienced separately during this political targeting. The co-authoring of our narratives thereby became a co-authoring of each other’s life story, and a means of linking our individual experiences to a broader collective goal. Malaka’s Story: Guilt by Association I was targeted first, on the last day of the elections for the Vice-President of the Exeter Student Guild. The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), an organisation that subsequently came to dominate much of the conversation in the UK concerning antisemitism within Labour and university contexts, tagged me in a tweet on 17 February. They complained that antisemitic graffiti, including swastikas, sprayed on university residence 5 We are indebted to Julie Rak for this formulation. 3 halls, had been ignored by the university. On that day, an exchange took place between CAA and the University of Exeter’s official Twitter account, which made clear that the group was seeking to implicate me in these antisemitic events, notwithstanding a total absence of evidence. “As @UniofExeter brushes off antisemitic incidents,” CAA wrote, “we reveal that @MalakaMohammed is about to be elected unopposed.”6 The link proposed was spurious; I had no knowledge of the graffiti and was in no way a party to it. But no one bothered to examine the data critically. Like the media, the university accepted uncritically the guilt-by-association tactics put in place by CAA, and failed to challenge the spurious link drawn between the antisemitic incidents and my six-year-old tweets. To CAA’s tweet complaining about my upcoming elections, the university responded “Hi, you can read a statement on antisemitism from our Vice-Chancellor here.”7 CAA’s complaint was retweeted by CAA chairman, and the university reposted the same statement, never once consulting with me concerning their media strategy or taking my interests into consideration.8 Notably, the statement from the Vice-Chancellor referred to an entirely different and unrelated series of antisemitic incidents, which were completely unrelated to my controversial tweets. While both CAA and the university Twitter account conflated the antisemitic incidents with my Twitter feed, there was no evidence to support this linkage, which appears to have been crafted to intensify the hostility of the attack on me. While the attacks against me were mounting, I won the elections. In my victory speech a few days later, I spoke out against all forms of racism, including antisemitism: I want to tell all those people who have been attacking and threatening me throughout the past few weeks, you are dealing with a Palestinian woman […] who will never feel weak in front of your Islamophobic attacks. I will resist, we will resist. I will continue to fight for freedom, justice and equality of my people in Palestine. I will continue to fight 6 Campaign Against Antisemitism, @antisemitism (18 February). Tweet. 7 University of Exeter, @UniofExeter. https://twitter.com/UniofExeter/status/832684063303442433 (17 February, 8:12PM). Tweet (thread containing the tweets in n7 and n8 below). 8 The tweet can be accessed here: https://twitter.com/GideonFalter/status/832600252498731012 and here: https://twitter.com/UniofExeter/status/832683661652791296. 4 all forms of racism and fascism. And I hope you will join me in this because together we are stronger, together we will win. Together our world will be brighter and more inclusive for all regardless of our difference, where we come from,